Video: When the US military tried to build a Fallout armor

Did you know that the U.S. military built the actual power armor from the popular video game and TV show Fallout?

Indeed, the Pentagon spent millions designing and testing a power armor that would make special operators almost unbeatable by their adversaries.

“The Fallout franchise of video games and now TV show loves to remind us of that war never changes, and while that may or may not be true, the technology leveraged in warfare definitely does,” Alex Hollings, the Editor-in-Chief of Sandboxx News and host of the Airpower YouTube channel, said in a recent video.

In the Fallout franchise, the Power Armor enhances a soldier’s power, stamina, situational awareness, and resilience to physical hits. Of course, the depiction isn’t the first time an exoskeleton appears in science fiction, with Marvel’s Iron Man being another example.

Drawing inspiration from these fictional weapon systems, the U.S. military experimented with exoskeletons that could give American troops an advantage over their adversaries.

Starting in the early 2010s, the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spent millions in research and development for the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS). Very similar to Fallout’s Power Armor, TALOS was designed to give special operators unique capabilities that would allow them to defeat enemies. Some of TALOS’s capabilities included sensors for improved situational awareness, the ability to carry large weights, and an advanced ceramic-metallic armor that could take repeated hits.

However, in 2019, the Pentagon ended up ditching the program for several reasons, as Hollings describes in the video. Nevertheless, the TALOS program highlights the lengths the U.S. military is willing to go to prevail in a future near-peer conflict with China or Russia.

As technology continues to advance and threats multiply, it is very likely that the U.S. military will once more envision a power armor that would make American troops nigh invisible to conventional threats on the battlefield.

You can watch Alex’s full video about it above.